Lessons on Social Interaction

Social Interaction

 

• With your classmates, form a group (five players).  Search online websites about a particular encounter your group agrees to attempt.  Choose someone to lead the group.  With your group, follow your leaders directions.  Afterwards, answer the following questions in the course message boards:
  • If you were a leader:  What was it like to lead your party?  What challenges did you face?  Did everyone do what you asked them to do?  How could you have improved your group members' performance?
  • If you were not the leader:  Do you feel like you had good instructions from your leader?  What would you have done differently? 
  • For everyone:  Why is leadership important?  What are good qualities of a leader?  What sort of challenges do leaders face in World of Warcraft?  How do those challenges compare to the leader of a major company?  A principal of a school?

     

• Interviewing
  • Gather with your classmates in the capital city of Ironforge, Stormwind, Darnassus, or Dalaran.  Find another player who is not a part of our guild (the class).  Ask them if they'd like to participate in an interview for a project.  Inform them that every question is entirely optional.  Ask them the following questions:
    • How long have you been playing online games?
    • How old are you?
    • What do you do for a living?
    • Has playing an online game had any positive or negative effects on your life?
    • ...Questions That Students Create...
    • (psheehy:also huge math connection here - data collection and analysis.)

 

• Barrens Chat/Elwyn Forest (Goldshire) Chat/Trade Channel Chat

   

 

          Sit in one of these regions (like the Barrens) for 20 minutes watching the general chat. Keep a log of the topics discussed in the chat. Create categories for the topics and sort them. Create a bubble map diagram to show the relationship and possible overlap of topics. Reflect on the topics (were they helpful, interesting, offensive, etc.).  What do you think motivates people to be helpful or annoying?

 

• Friends/Ignore List

 

          Why do you think Blizzard incorporated a way to add friends in the game? How is this a helpful tool? Why do you think they also included a way to block interaction with players? Is this helpful? Look at your friends list. Who is on it? Why? Are any of them people that you know in RL (real life)? Are any of them people you met in-game? Why did you add them to your list? (Same questions for Ignore list).

 

• Reporting Someone

 

          Have you ever reported someone for something? What are some reasons you might report someone? Look into the GM (Game Master) help interface in the game. What are some common issues?

 

• Team Relations

 

          Research guilds. You’ll find a lot of helpful information on the World of Warcraft forums. Read the forum postings and come up with your own list of Do’s and Don’ts for managing a guild. How is the role of the guild master (or leader) different from the guild members? How is the role of the guild officer different from the members? What would you expect of these key people if you were in their guild.  Develop a guild ranking system that lists each rank you would use if you were leading a guild.  What would you expect members in each of these ranks to do?

 

• Guild Applications

 

          Some large guilds require people to apply to them before allowing them to join. Why do you think this may be the case? Create an application for a guild that you will lead. Make sure that you come up with a brief description of the guild and its goals beforehand. What kinds of questions will you put on the application? How do the questions reflect the goals of your guild? Give a copy of the application to several of your friends that play WoW and have them fill it out. Would you let them into your guild based on their answers? What additional information might you need to add? What kind of questions would immediately “red flag” that application and make you think twice about accepting that person. How would you disseminate the application and make it available for people?